up for her hand and held it, desperately. "Oh, Fan!" began
Theodore, "Fan, I've been through hell."

Fanny said nothing. She only waited, quietly, encouragingly. She had
learned when not to talk. Presently he took up his story, plunging
directly into it, as though sensing that she had already divined much.

"She married me for a living. You'll think that's a joke, knowing what
I was earning there, in Vienna, and how you and mother were denying
yourselves everything to keep me. But in a city that circulates a
coin valued at a twentieth of a cent, an American dollar looms up
big. Besides, two of the other girls had got married. Good for nothing
officers. She was jealous, I suppose. I didn't know any of that. I was
flattered to think she'd notice me. She was awfully popular. She has
a kind of wit. I suppose you'd call it that. The other girls were just
coarse, and heavy, and--well--animal. You can't know the rottenness of
life there in Vienna. Olga could keep a whole supper table laughing all
evening. I can see, now, that that isn't difficult when your audience
is made up of music hall girls, and stupid, bullet-headed officers, with
their damned high collars, and their gold braid, and their silly swords,
and their corsets, and their glittering shoes and their miserable petty
poverty beneath all the show. I thought I was a lucky boy. I'd have
pitied everybody in Winnebago, if I'd ever thought of anybody in
Winnebago. I never did, except once in a while of you and mother when
I needed money. I kept on with my music. I had sense enough left, for
that. Besides, it was a habit, by that time. Well, we were married."

He laughed, an ugly, abrupt little laugh that ended in a moan, and
turned his head and buried his face in Fanny's breast. And Fanny's arm
was there, about his shoulder. "Fanny, you don't--I can't--" He stopped.
Another silence. Fanny's arm tightened its hold. She bent and kissed the
top of the stubbly head, bowed so low now. "Fan, do you remember that
woman in `The Three Musketeers'? The hellish woman, that all men
loved and loathed? Well, Olga's like that. I'm not whining. I'm not
exaggerating. I'm just trying to make you understand. And yet I don't
want you to understand. Only you don't know what it means to have you to
talk to. To have some one who"--he clutched her hand, fearfully--"You do
love me, don't you, Fanny? You do, don't you, Sis?"

"More than any one in the world," Fanny reassured him, quietly. "The